Why build your own panelized home?

What this episode covers

Show Notes: Why build your own Landmark Panelized Home?  Save money, understand and control your new home project. Build the new kit home you want versus buying an existing home to remodel. Transcript: Interviewer: Hello folks. Welcome to episode 35 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio in his usual chair is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how is it going my friend? Steve Landmark: It’s a great day. It’s always a great day. Interviewer: Especially when you’re doing something you love. That must be satisfying. Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s kind of fun. It’s actually a lot of fun. It’s rewarding to watch people get a new home. Interviewer: Yeah. Steve Landmark: The design process, seeing that they can actually happen. Interviewer: Sure. Steve Landmark: It’s pretty cool. Interviewer: Today if you don’t mind, I thought we would address the topic we get a lot of questions on from our listeners. It’s simple but complex I think. Why build your own home? I mean as opposed to simply buying a traditional house that’s ready to go. You know, dealing with realtors, et cetera. In other words, what are the many upsides to building a panelized house or even a traditional stick house as opposed to just buying a house that’s on the market? Let’s start with things like cost control. I mean how does building a panelized home save you, the builder, money? Steve Landmark: Well, the key to it is the control of the project, the whole – you know, getting the architectural design, structural details of the plans together, so you understand the project. Also so you can submit for permits, pass inspections and then work with contractors to get the home built. There’s a huge savings when you combine that altogether and sometimes people just look at the cost of hey, the plans and the panelized package. They don’t realize that the efficiency of panelization, you’re going to save money on the actual installation of the panels because it goes up much quicker. You can have these houses up in days or a week or something like that where a more complex home can go on a month or two depending on the design. But it’s also things – there isn’t as much waste of settling your dumpster fees. Those would go down. It’s just quicker and easier. Also you basically just need a main framer with a couple of laborers compared to conventional stick building where you might need a variety of different higher quality labor, which ends up costing you more. A lot of people also go with panelization because of limited building seasons. You get into the Sierras or the Rockies, different – farther up north where they don’t have as much summers other parts of the country. Interviewer: Sure, yeah. Steve Landmark: They need to build a house in four months. So with the panelization, you’re able to get the structure up and then get the house sealed up and finished. Interviewer: Right. Steve Landmark: So there’s a lot of reasons why panelization works. We basically put it under the idea of control your project and know what you’re doing, which is the planning process where we’re able to support the customer to get the house that they want and then make sure that the plans are put together properly for the building department. Now you brought something up. I think compared to like buying an existing home. Sometimes people go through and say, “Well, I could buy this existing home and I could build new. There’s good and bad to each one.” But the reality is that the new home, it’s the design you want. It’s the house you want. It’s the budget that you want and you’re also going to have the better insulation,